“The EU, if it really wants to stop smuggling from Zuwara, they need to
bring us the tools to this office,” Mostafa said, claiming that millions
of dollars meant for ports like Zuwara had never reached their target
after they were sent straight to the central government in Tripoli. “We
need serious tools, boats, proper patrols, a committee to train us.
Don’t give the aid to Tripoli. Give it to us in Zuwara.”"...(parags. near end of article) Map from BBC

4/21/15, "Obama’s Murky Libya Policy," Ann Marlowe "Most Americans are unaware that since August (2014), Tripoli and western
Libya have been ruled by Islamic extremistsvery similar to people we
are fighting in Iraq and Yemen. We don’t currently negotiate with the
terrorists in those countries, but we advise the Libyans to do so in
theirs. Many of the top Fajr commanders are veterans of the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an al-Qaeda affiliate; many were captured
on the battlefield by US troops in Afghanistan or Pakistan, rendered to
Libya, and imprisoned until Qaddafi’s overthrow. Abdelhakim Belhadj, a
participant in the UN negotiations, is among the LIFG gang—even though
his Watan Party failed to win a single seat in the House of
Representatives.

The prime minister chosen by this motley crew, Omar al-Hassi, was
prone to praising Ansar al-Sharia, the terror group that killed US
Ambassador Chris Stevens on September 12, 2012. Even as Hassi was
dismissed two weeks ago, Ansar’s Libyan head declared allegiance to the
Islamic State “caliph” in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. One former Libyan
cabinet minister, Ali Mohamed Mihirig, told me that the Misrata militias
in Fajr are still arming Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi....

Libyans have noticed that the UN-sponsored talks involve, in the
local English-language paper’s words, “an even split between
representatives of secular and Islamist parties,”even though the
Islamists won only a small share of seats in the Tobruk-based House of
Representatives. The talks are penalizing the legitimate government for
losing control of the capital to violent thugs—and that control is the
only “legitimacy” the thugs have. The moral seems to be that one gets a
better position at the negotiating table by picking up guns than by
political campaigning. Libyans supporting the elected government often
lament on Twitter and Facebook that the international community is
foisting violent Islamists upon an electorate that has done everything
possible to reject them.

Meanwhile, the US has opposed lifting a United Nations ban on arming
the Tobruk government to take control of its own territory back from the
Islamic State, Ansar al-Sharia, and Fajr. Libyans don’t understand why
the elected Yemeni government gets help, and the elected Iraqi
government gets help, but the elected Libyan government is supposed to
negotiate evenly with those who rose up against it. Qatar and Turkey
continue to support the Fajr militias, including with covert arms
shipments, while US allies like Egypt’s General Sisi, Jordan’s King
Abdullah, and the UAE support the Tobruk government as the best defense
against a takeover of the country by the Islamic State....

There are plenty
of Libyans who mutter darkly that the US is “really” supporting the
terrorists—and it’s hard to explain that it only looks that way....

The Libyan state
has spent an estimated 4 billion dinars, or $2.96 billion, financing the
undisciplined militiamen (of all stripes) who have torn the country
apart. That would have paid for a lot of job training programs. And the
internationally recognized post-Qaddafi administrations have been
extraordinarily incompetent. Libya’s permanent representative to the
United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, told me, “We don’t have the
institutions to absorb the foreign assistance.” When I asked what help
he wanted from the US for Libya, he only suggested easing the UN arms
embargo....

No Libyan government has ever
asked for US troops on the ground, and that’s a good thing. If anything,
the Libyans have been too reluctant to ask for our expertise. But what
they have asked for, and can really use, is the moral weight of our
support for elections and our refusal to negotiate with terrorists....